By Julie McCay Turner
For more than 12 hours on Saturday, November 5 Nick Stavropoulis and Richard Hughes stood in front of the Bedford Funeral Home, channeling the late John Dodge. In John’s memory, they collected coats and other outerwear to benefit St. Francis House, one of the first day shelters in Boston.
John Dodge began his coat drive for St. Francis House in 1983, because, “There’s nothing worse than being homeless,” he said in a 2012 interview. John remembered Bedford’s ‘Poor Farm’ as a place where indigent residents could live, work and lead productive lives. “The [farms] are a thing of the past,” he concluded, “and now poor people often have no place to go.”
After John’s death, his family – especially Nick Stavropolis who collected coats with John for many years — was determined to keep the coat drive alive for at least another year. And, it turned out that 2016 was a banner year, with old friends stopping by, and thumbs up from the police each time they passed by. Late in the day, one officer turned on his speaker and exclaimed, “Awesome haul!”
With plenty of publicity, including a story on Boston.com, this year’s coat drive came off without a hitch. At the end of the day, more than 50 construction bags, each filled to the brim, were stored in the garage at Bedford Funeral Home, awaiting transport to St. Francis House.
Carol Hamilton, a long-time Bedford resident, delivered three carloads of clothes. “This came at a good time,” she said, “since we’re doing a major clean out of our house.” Because of the number of garments in this year’s collection, Hamilton and her husband Peter Johnson joined Hughes, Stavropolis, and staff from the Bedford Funeral Home in packing the clothing for transport to Boston.
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